


Angel Dust

by blackazuresoul



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Self-Flagellation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 07:29:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackazuresoul/pseuds/blackazuresoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: 'looking up to Heaven, he'd wept for the innocense he'd lost'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angel Dust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theskywasblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/gifts).



Alexander Anderson sat in the basement of the rectory, several of his blades on the wooden table before him awaiting their nightly ritual. The thin metal shafts winked up at the blonde, though several were tarnished with filthy vampire blood. The damned monster had had the nerve to not die from his blessed instruments and wards scattered along the wall. It was clear that this Alucard was made of stronger stuff than the manufactured creatures the Archbishop charged he and his brethren with destroying.  
  
He lovingly took a blade in hand and drew it slowly along a whetstone, the droning rhythm soothing his nerves that were still on edge from the earlier battle. It shamed Alexander to have to return to his order without the thing’s head impaled on one of his bayonets, but no one moved to admonish him when he spoke the name of his enemy. They simply crossed themselves and moved against the wall as he passed bloody and exhausted.  
  
For years, Alexander had the doctrines of the Church drummed and sometimes beaten into him. Do not sin, combat those who do and uphold the righteous Dogma. Except, he imagined, the Church Fathers likely didn’t expect the trump that was Hellsing’s pet abomination. “In the name of God. Impure souls shall find redemption in the cleansing salvation of blessed steel. Amen,” the cleric murmured, his blade carefully turned to sharpen the reverse edge.  
  
At least this is what he was supposed to believe. Alexander hadn’t figured on the devil getting under his skin. Hadn’t planned on pondering sins no entreaty to the Almighty could easily absolve. Surely this was the affect of the creature’s black magic worming its way through his senses. With a frown, the priest pulled the blade across the stone; metal singing as its tip met the table surface in his unease. This wasn’t how the game was played. When next they met, Anderson pledged that he would send the undead beast back to hell where he belonged; forever banishing those sunset eyes that peered back at him in the darkness of his dreams.  
  
He and his organisation had battled undead and heretics for centuries, under the august command of the Holy See. Section XIII– the Vatican’s dirty secret– had all but rid Rome and her provinces of any hellish threat but it seemed that other players had entered the game late to try their hand at the destruction of good Catholic lives. Rumours abounded, not only in Italy, but wholesale around Europe. The Archbishop had been clear in his missive to ‘cleanse’ Ireland of the vampire threat and the Paladin had almost succeeded; if it weren’t for _Babylon_ getting her unholy knickers in a twist over the Iscariot’s assumed invasion of Hellsing’s territory. Enrico’s orders to return to the Vatican, delivered by the hand of that Protestant sow, were met with silence and Anderson had retreated; leaving both Alucard and his whelp with a few things to remember him by.  
  
  
Alexander’s boots sounded as he crossed the marble floor of the vestibule, his blades bundled in a sack and fitted beneath an arm. They would be re-consecrated by one of the Cardinals, ready for a future try at that heathen whore’s dog. Green eyes flashed with purpose and Paladin Anderson felt the liquid surge of anticipation jolt through his veins, manifesting itself in a displaced smirk that shamelessly showed itself to the Elder as Alexander delivered his bayonets. When the Archbishop suggested that he see to his inappropriate leer, the priest merely bowed his chin and left without words.  
  
Things had been so much simpler when he’d first joined the order and Alexander dreamed of a tidy parish somewhere with a modest-sized flock. Shortly after leaving the seminary, his mentor had saw to a situation for him at a small orphanage outside Rome. As the priest traversed the corridors, his mind diverted down memory lane. In the fullness of time, little snot-nosed Enrico had grown up to be the overly pompous Archbishop, who then took over leadership of the Iscariot at the ripe old age of 26. There was still a part of Alexander that regretted how his former charge turned out but there was little he could do. His Holiness had made his intentions clear, as Maxwell leapfrogged through the Church hierarchy.  
The Paladin felt he had much to answer for, if even by proxy.  
  
The scent of leather was sharp within the closet of a room, several specimens of discipline hanging from a worn pegboard to Alexander’s left. He briefly recalled one of his order remarking that there wasn’t room enough to swing a cat in the space he now occupied, but that had been disproven quickly– the cat in question; third row down, three from the left. The cleric’s finger touched the handle of the instrument, tracing the herringbone pattern the leather made as it wrapped around. He hooked several of the free tails, the thongs expertly plaited and knotted at the end. A cord flogger would never be good enough for a sinner like he. A crop-- too kind.  
  
He lifted the implement from the pegboard, testing its weight in his right hand. The handle moved within the palm of his hand and the impassioned visage of The Saviour met Alexander from a small gilded frame in the centre of the wall before him. The leather tails of the whip snaked over the palm of his left hand and he let them drop to remove his glasses. They were carefully placed on the worn wood table beneath the painting of Christ and a drop of sweat fell from the paladin’s chin to meander down the centre of his bare chest.  
  
Alexander softly threw the tails of the instrument over his left shoulder, the handle firm in his grip as he intoned a quiet plea in the language of the Church. "Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us,” he whispered and the leather braids swung to strike the flesh of his back as his arm moved the whip in increasingly sharp and rapid arcs. The rhythmic sounds filled the room in accompaniment to Paladin Anderson’s shallow breaths. His head remained bowed, his lips moving with the silent words of prayer he offered up to God. Sweat stung the tiny cuts that bloomed on his back and sides, the short prayer a mantra to the discipline Alexander meted out upon his own flesh. The pain was his atonement, his salvation and his privilege. It centred his mind, rid his traitorous body of its machinations and put into pinpoint focus his burning want to take care of the problem on that small island of degenerates to the far northwest.  
England and all her pomposity. Defiant to the true Church for centuries, she would bend– or she would most certainly break.  
  
The priest fell to his knees on the hard floor, his left arm bent and raised to the side; clear of the path of the whip. Had he ever been _innocent_? No amount of lamentation to Heaven would expunge the path he’d taken– nor did Anderson want it. He had put foot on the path he tread years ago and his role within the Iscariot was clear. Dreams were simply that and he let them fade with each strike against his flesh. Blood and tears were his testament and Alexander let them come as he drew sin from his body via this most holy instrument. His weight pressed his knees against the stone floor, the joints aching as bones were ground into the unforgiving brickwork. Several more lashes marked him then Alexander fell forward onto his hands, his abdomen rising and falling as he breathed through his contrition, the instrument now relieved of its duty.  
  
In the scant light of the small room, the markings of the cleric’s atonement lay crisscrossed along his back, several stripes releasing tiny tears of blood. Alexander’s short hair was damp at the ends and as he breathed through the pain, his skin broke in bumps; fine hairs rising along his arms in reaction to the cooling sensation of the air. Paladin Anderson sat back on his heels and kissed the leather implement, his eyes momentarily fluttering closed as his lips met the handle of the whip. He slowly lowered it and looked up at the portrait then laid the object next to his glasses and crossed himself, whispering the _Signum Crucis_ in a deep brogue. Alexander’s hands laid on his thighs and he bowed his head, finishing the prayer he’d earlier begun and abandoned for the _Magnificat_.  
  
“Agnus Dei, quitollis peccata mundi: dona nobis pacem.” he murmured, knowing he’d never be granted such.


End file.
